Keyframing in Studio Artist / Swan Lake

[Iwan Peter Scheer]

Rather than hijack other threads, I thought it would be a good idea to start a thread that aims to delve deeper into how to do rotoscope animation in studio artist the more "traditional way'', adding manual keyframes and having the software do the hard work and calculate the inbetweens.

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The long term aim is to establish a workflow using different studio artist tools that can help me make a fifteen minute short film using this technique.  If in the process it can help anyone else achieve the same or pick up some tips or ways of working, that would be even better.

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To start off I've selected a clip from Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake.

I'm not sure what the rules are according to using existing footage, but as it's for learning purposes I think it should be ok.   I've done quite a few tests already, but it's probably best to start off pretending to know nothing about studio artist, which I didn't a few weeks ago.

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If I opened up the software for the first time, this is what I would have tried first.

• Load in the source movie
• Press record
• Start Drawing
• Switch on sequential keyframing
• Continue Drawing on frames further down the timeline
• Render Animate the result to a movie 

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This is a screenshot of work in progress

You can see the result in the straightahead.mov

For anyone brave enough to try this at home I've added both the session file and the paseq preset.

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It animates and the keyframes look good but the interpolation is a bit random to say the least.

To fix this I've picked up quite a few tips from the forum, which I'm going to try and implement next.

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Stay tuned,

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[John Dalton Synthetik Software]

Different paint presets could potentially have a lot of path variability, depending on the specific settings of the Path Randomization control panel for the paint preset you are using. So if you keyframe animate with a preset that generates lot of random path squiggle, then you will see that happening in the animation.

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The waking life line work is composed of vector paint strokes. Which you can of course generate in the paint synthesizer by using the appropriate paint preset, or editing one yourself. So you could use a wacom pen, where pen pressure was modulating the line width of the vector paint stroke, to draw the paint strokes. To get the thin at either end, fatter in the middle effect.

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You could also do that automatically by using the Sin Path Length option for the Size Modulation parameter in the Brush Modulation control panel. This would automatically modulate the brush size based on the where you were in the over all path length of a path.

This works great for automatically generated paths. For a manually generated path, you have the issue of what is the path length. So interactive pen would be a bad pen mode to use if you wanted to do this. You would want to do your drawing using freestyle pen mode.

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So i think one thing to take away from this particular reply, is that Studio Artist's paint synthesizer is extremely versatile in terms of the different artistic styles you can achieve. So if you want to emulate a pencil drawing animation, or a watercolor animation, or whatever, you can do it by using the appropriate paint presets. Since the whole nature of the 'A Scanner Darkly' look (that was the image you originally posted that started this discussion) is all vector drawing, you would want to use appropriate vector paint presets to emulate it's aesthetic look if you were manually building up animation like you want to do.

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Also, again, thanks for getting this particular discussion thread going. the feedback from watching you work and get up to speed is really good for us at Synthetik. And you've already introduced some new features based on your feedback from your previous thread, so we do really listen to our customers and try to extend the program to meet different workflow needs.

[Iwan Peter Scheer]

Following your comments, I decided to do a vector stroke test today, but am not making much progress.  There are a few issues that are proving hard to figure out.

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I used the india ink paint preset from the hand drawn media and used the macro edit to turn off all randomisation.  But even then there is still some squiggly quality to the line.  Are there some other settings that will add noise to the linework?  If you could point me to a paint preset that only draws a clean vector that would definitely help, but I would also like to understand what other parameters influence this behaviour.

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I then made a very simple paseq where I want the lines to interpolate.  The drawing in each keyframe looks fine but as soon as I push the animate button to get a feel for the motion, the linework changes to very thick continuous strokes. 

Is there a particular way in which to animate vector drawings or is it just a question of inadvertently changing some key paint preset setting?

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[John Dalton Synthetik Software]

It's actually a characteristic of the paint synthesizer settings of the particular vector paint preset you picked. In some sense i would characterize the PASeq playback behavior of this particular preset as a bug on our part. So i'll add it to our 'to do' list as something to look into and try to fix.

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The gory details (if you are interested in the inner workings of vector paint), have to do with the use of the Bezier Path option for the Vector Stroke Type parameter in the Vector Output control panel. The Bezier Path vector stroke type is not really supposed to be a variable sized brush. You can get that behavior as a function of how the interactive pen code works to draw it when you manually paint with it. But it doesn't actually carry over to PASeq playback of that kind of vector stroke type. Or to automatic painting via the action button.

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If you switch the Vector Stroke Type to Sphere on Path (in the Vector Output control panel), then it will work the way you want it to for PASeq playback with that particular paint preset.

[Iwan Peter Scheer]

I have a few things I want to share today.  

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Before making any further progress I want to sort out the vector drawing and interpolation in studio artist.  I've read up a bit on the subject by browsing through the forum and even though I'm far from a technical expert in the matter I did make a few observations.

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As a general point I get the impression studio artist vectors are closely related to the path actions and controls.  It's those that are used for most automatic drawing operations but also as a midpoint to draw and convert vectors.  In studio artist paths live in the path layer, somewhere halfway between pixels and vectors.  I'm probably using all the wrong terms but from a practical point of view it does matter.

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The solution you propose is a workable compromise and gets me a step further.  When I have the time I would like to get further into the bezier drawing tools, but for now I've taken on board the tips you mention and had another go.

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I really like the results and for the first time I get a good feeling about the curve interpolation.  With only two keyframes the curves behave predictably and smoothly and keep the character of the original stroke.

If you want to have a go, I've uploaded the necessary files to get you going.

e1

 

[Iwan Peter Scheer]

And here's the rendered result

The lines are still a bit squiggly, but I hope to get to that later.

[Iwan Peter Scheer]

Yes, only two keys, three strokes and five minutes work for this animation.

[Iwan Peter Scheer]

After this little productive sidetrack I want to get back to the main event.

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I'm now comfortable using the paseq window, have a predictable paint preset and know a little bit more about path interpolation.  So I  tried to apply these new insights in my next pass to get closer to the original movement of my dancer.

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The actual drawing part was pretty straightforward but it quickly became clear that I would need A LOT OF KEYFRAMES to make this work.  I actually stopped at one drawing every two frames and noticed a definite flicker when playing it back.  

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When I flipped through my sequence frame by frame, I noticed that the flicker actually came from the difference between my drawings and the ones the computer had interpolated.  They just looked and felt completely different.  My strategy of drawing the character outline in one go, starting from the head was just not working out.

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And at one hand drawing every two frames, I feel the machine is not doing enough drawing and earning it's keep.

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I added the workfiles but had to zip the session file for filesize reasons.

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e1

[Iwan Peter Scheer]

and again the rendered result

[Iwan Peter Scheer]

I knew the only solution was to change my painting method and step away from drawing the complete character outline in one go.  A bit disappointing as this meant moving away from what felt like a more natural way of drawing and adapt a painting strategy that would interpolate better but that felt more disjointed.

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Having made this step and going for a method of drawing individual limbs one at a time and skipping through the frames, I did notice a marked improvement in the interpolation and almost got away with one drawing every five frames.  Good progress indeed.  But skpping out of source onion skin mode and  looking closer at the linework, there are moments you can tell they are individual strokes moving independantly.

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Maybe it's something I can fix as I get more at ease with this way of drawing.  All in all a pretty good week's progress and looking forward discover more.  I've only uploaded the paseq file as that is all that has changed.

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e1 

[Iwan Peter Scheer]

and the rendered result

[Lucas Krech]

I have not looked through all your attached files, so perhaps the answer to my question is already there, but if you are starting from a source movie anyhow, have you tried the approach of a PASeq that draws a bezier path from edges and then a pen that follows those edges? Was the source movie just used for reference and discussion and is not what you eventually want to base your imagery on?